Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Coming home last evening, I saw Wally toss his head up at the first sound of my car and then leap forward into a joyful gallop toward the barn. His head high and his tail streaming behind, he was breathtakingly beautiful in the waning light of day. I wished with all my heart our paths had converged much earlier in life. He and I would have covered hundreds of miles together. He does not possess the most beautiful conformation of the Arabian breed, but he does possess the grace and lightness of all his forebears. "Oh, Wally!" I thought to myself. "You deserve a far better name!"

Of course, the magnificent gallop was toward the barn because I would soon be throwing hay. Wally knows if he gets there first, he can sometimes grab a few bites of extra hay before Miss Thang gets there with her iron hooves of rule. He also uses it as an excuse to run because that is what horses do.

Though I spent most of my childhood around horses, I do not know a lot about them. I am still a rank amateur except in what I have observed of their behavior during the time spent caring for them. Before Wally there was my dear little Orphan Annie. She was a horse with a sense of humor. She thought it was funny to gently knock me over when I bent down to pound the snow and ice out of the feed tub. I realize the idea that a horse might have a sense of humor is impossible for some people, but once you've experienced humor from another species, it is unmistakable. The intent is clear.

Ginger is too busy making sure she is the boss to have a sense of humor. Everyone better do as she says - or else! She and I have had a minor dispute a time or two. Hard to say who won. I am still walking around without any broken bones, so I guess she grudgingly concedes the ultimate title of Boss to me. Some one has to earn money to buy her hay and hoof care, after all. Since I bring home the bacon, that makes me the real boss. Ginger loves me. Of course she loves Wally more but I am her favorite human being. I humbly accept this affection from her highness.

Wally is a different story. He has never bullied me or pushed me around - except for unceremoniously rubbing his big head against me whenever I put a halter on him! He loves Ginger and takes his duties as protector of their little herd seriously, always going forward toward whatever threat they both can hear along the creek that keeps them on point. There seems to be a sadness in Wally. When the vet visited the first time, he came into the pasture wearing a ball cap. At first sight of a man in a ball cap, Wally snorted in recognition and came running only to slam on the brakes when he realized it was a stranger. I was certain Wally thought it was his former owner and that made me so sad. Wally likes me okay but he does not love me the way Ginger does.

I have read about old horse cultures that built their winter dwellings so they could shelter their horses with them. Of course, horses were the lifeblood of their survival so they would go to great lengths to protect them. But anyone who has ever loved a horse knows that if it were just more practical, living together in the same dwelling would be a great idea! They are just too darned big and then there's all that manure... I will settle for looking out the back door every morning to see my horses waiting for their breakfast.

Sunday, January 1, 2017

It is the last day of the year and time for reflection. Contemplation. Comparison. It is a good opportunity to consider any needed course change - adjusting for local conditions as I like to call it. When I was a young woman there were many times I needed to make significant adjustments - in relationships, employment, locale. Those were gross adjustments. As I look back, the mature years of life have been mostly quiet - internal adjustments - fine tuning.

I gave the Christian religion a serious run but it simply did not hold up to the wear and tear of real life. The Christian arrogance of the "true believers" chased me out of adult Sunday school when a young man confidently concluded that my best friend was condemned to hell for being homosexual. With the full weight of all the generations of imperious Christian fascism, he concluded the "debate" with the church's ace in the hole: "It's scriptural!" His tightly sealed lips drawn into a self-righteous frown of stern finality, as if he had just won a debate with Satan himself, showed me most clearly that I was wasting my time with such bullshit. Of course, I did not and do not paint all Christians with that particularly distasteful brush. There are true Christians in this world, and they are gentle, loving people who do not bludgeon others with scriptural hate and intolerance. They are the true followers of Jesus.

Leaving organized religion behind for good was a fundamental course adjustment. The beginning, middle and end of significant relationships were course-altering events. Jobs and friends and neighborhoods and other such details all influenced my journey. When I turned forty, an enormous dissonance plainly revealed itself. I had been living unaware on the very mountain I had been searching for most of my life. It was when I made the conscious decision to locate the mountain that everything changed, though I did not know it for many, many years. It was a simple decision - a mere thought, actually. It was a brief moment I had while sitting on the floor praying. I only recognize that moment in hindsight. It was the merest fraction of a degree course correction that brought me to my current place all these decades later.

Sometimes I imagine my course extending far ahead into future lives, though I cannot imagine what a single one of those lives might be. The Tibetans say it is not an individual, central soul that extends through all lifetimes but that reincarnation is more like "dice, stacked loosely atop one another". I admit I felt faint when I first experienced that statement. It took a couple of years of chewing on that idea, worrying it around like a dog with an old bone until I felt comfortable with it. If that is true, my understanding of it as I sit here today is that our physical lives as we know them are simply small manifestations welling up from an infinite sea of life force and consciousness, loosely bounded by karmic forces and chance. There is so much more!

Knowing something intellectually is a far cry from being able to practically use the knowledge, but knowing something intellectually is also the first step of any journey, even an infinite journey toward understanding. The concept that there may not be a Chief Engineer carefully attending to every, single, minute detail in my life as I once imagined literally blasts my carefully structured "understanding" into infinity. It is almost more than I can safely imagine.

The sacred mountain is within every single human being. It is surely within every single living being, and within things we in the West consider inanimate. It is our true nature. We have forgotten it. It takes a lifetime - maybe many lifetimes - to remember.

The times I have drawn nearest to that knowing, in both spirit and in the flesh, I have been in the sweat lodge. It is in that sacred space, that incredibly hot, claustrophobic, pitch black moment when it is impossible to avoid myself. There I am - every single thing I do not like about myself - what I am ashamed of, embarrassed for, and disappointed in. All the pain and anger I have brought on myself and others - the injustices that have been inflicted on me - it is all there, revealed in the dark as if illuminated by the brightest light. If I may quote myself, that is truly a "well, hell" moment. It is ugly and feels terrible. I eventually realized the point of that moment is to clearly see myself, to find what needs attending. It is also a chance to look beyond - far beyond. It is the easiest of all impossible things.

As is customary: Wishing peace on earth and goodwill toward (some) men - from the Crazy Woman, the Supreme Beings, and Jake the Bad Dog here at Spiritcreek.

About Me

I live in a little house on the prairie - a few acres in the tall grass prairie of the Kansas Flint Hills. This blog started with an idea of photographing and writing about the Flint Hills to share the beauty with the rest of the world. I soon discovered far better writers and photographers were already doing just that. (You can find their work by following the links posted under "Other Cool Sites".) The other talented writers and photographers took the pressure off, leaving me free to indulge in whatever nonsense comes to mind.
Email: oldharleygurl@gmail.com